I’m having some trouble getting my head around these
Covid-19 numbers in juxtaposition with the pronouncements coming out of the
White House.

In round numbers, in mid-April, we have about half a million diagnosed cases of Covid-19, with about 20,000 deaths due to the virus. This is a lethality rate of about 0.04%, which is much higher than typical viruses, but is also a moving number, which could decrease with more data.

60,000 total deaths are now the forecast, which means we may expect another 40,000 deaths. That is way down from the early models forecasting from 100,000 to 240,000 deaths, which is a really good thing (we learn as we go, right?), but still a whole lot of deaths. And that 60,000 figure, I understand, assumes complete social distancing and self-isolation (“if we do everything right”), which is not yet the case.

Trump says he wants to “open up” our economy about May
1. Hmmm. So, if the models are right, or close to right, and Trump thinks this
thing should be over by May Day, that means we should expect another 40,000
deaths in the next 15 days, or about 2,667 per day. Does anyone seriously expect the economy to “open
up” in those circumstances?

Obviously, these numbers are ad absurdum. That many deaths are not going to occur in the next two weeks. In fact, some experts think the death rate may have peaked on Friday, when it hit 2,000. So, logically, these 40,000 projected deaths are going to stretch beyond May 1, possibly way beyond.

But channeling Trump’s optimism, let’s extend the
timeframe to “open up” the economy to Memorial Day, May 31. 40,000 deaths over
45 days is still 889 deaths per day. I’m not buying it that people are going to
be ready to go back to work when we’re still losing about a thousand lives a
day to the virus.

These are not editorial comments; these are just the
numbers and dates being presented officially. But it is plain as the bodies
piling up in the morgues that the situation is a lot more nuanced than what is
being advanced.

Sadly, Trump is not a nuanced kind of guy. He is a clueless
kind of guy and not interested in becoming less so. So, interspersed with
cautious comments from experts (cautious because caution is warranted and
because if they speak too candidly, they know they will be fired), is a mash-up
of happy talk and crazy talk.

The saddest thing is that Trump is too stupid to
realize that if he would take/had taken forceful action to increase testing and
mandate massive manufacturing of ventilators and other medical equipment, the timeframe
would be shorter and the deaths fewer.

P.S. I’ve given up on trying to calculate lives lost unnecessarily by state, due to inaction or willful stupidity. The news that we let 40,000 people into the country directly from China after the date Trump said he had banned such entries, renders all the calculations mere guesswork and not worth the effort.

April Fool’s Day: To
state the obvious, Trump’s prediction that our Covid-19 deaths would go to zero,
and that the whole disease would magically disappear by April was a cruel joke.

Trump is now nodding in the affirmative at the experts’
opinion that deaths from the virus in the U.S. could rise to the hundreds of
thousands, but he still hems and haws about taking truly aggressive action to
address it, leaving the hard work to governors and mayors and individuals.
Perhaps it’s just as well; they’re all more capable of rational action than he.
But, rest assured, when the virus finally does subside, Trump will take credit
for it.

Trump said Saturday night that there is “a lot of
death ahead,” as if it were something he knew but we didn’t, though we did know,
and he was in denial about it. But things would have been worse if he hadn’t
been a superhero. What a pig part!

The price of being stupid: One
expert opined that for every day that we are not in lockdown, deaths will
increase about 15% per day in state where there is not one, due to their failure
to do so. Counting from the day Trump banned travelers from China but has done
almost nothing since, I may be able to calculate per state how many Covid-19
deaths Trump is personally responsible for. I’ll let you know what I am able to
work out.

Note: the deaths can’t all be laid at Trump’s feet.
Some Republican governors are guilty of some of them, due to their own
misfeasance. I’m looking at you, Florida Governor DeSantis. I’ll try to factor
that into my calculations.

On a related note, Thomas Massie, the miserable low-down
Kentucky Republican Congressperson who held up the relief package vote by a day
or two and forced his colleagues to return to D.C. to vote his mischief down,
has earned himself a primary opponent. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving
individual.

Sunday Disservices: Rodney Howard-Browne, the Florida mega-church
minister who held Sunday Services, drawing his flock into close proximity with
one another, thus endangering their health and wellbeing, is still crowing
about this defiance of common sense and disservice to his congregation. (As
anyone who reads my stuff would surmise, I do not consider church an essential
business.)

In my deepest, darkest fantasies, I would love to see this
minister, and his entire gullible, superstitious flock, wiped out by the virus.
In fact, I’d like to see all evangelicals go the way of all flesh gruesomely
because of their hypocrisy and abandonment of moral principles in their
genuflection to Trump. For one thing, it would wipe out the majority of Trump’s
base just in time for the national election in November.

Of course, I can’t and don’t wish it. But I can
fantasize about it.

Infrastructure money in the next relief
package: This was a great idea 12 years ago when President
Obama begged for it. It would have been a big help in recovering from Dubbya’s economic
ruination then, because it would have put people to work. But I’m not sure
fighting for the money in the current circumstances is the right time.

For one thing, it detracts from the immediate priority
of fighting the virus. For another, I don’t see how the money can be
intelligently spent right now, because people are supposed to stay at home and
not get close to one another. It’s hard to see how you can do that and
construct a road or bridge or anything else.

National Institutes of Health: Is
it just me, or does this organization’s logo look like a football helmet?

Masks, I knew it all the time: Because
I am a septuagenarian, and my immune system is badly compromised at present due
to four surgeries on my broken jaw, I have tried to be very cautious about
Covid-19, though my daughters say I am not being cautious enough, in part
because I have been meeting with four other guys for a weekly poker game (we
have suspended this game until further notice.)

American medical experts were at the time saying masks
weren’t particularly helpful, but I wore a mask to the poker games and just
about everywhere else anyway because Asians like them and they are pretty smart,
so I thought why not? As I was wearing mine, I found a genuine benefit from
them on my own: it kept me from touching my nose and mouth.

Since then, American experts have been coming around
to recommending masks, and I was heartened when Dr. Manuel said one reason he
was coming around is that masks keep you from touching your face. I’m feeling
pretty smug.

Briefly noted: Trump
fired Inspector General Michael Atkinson for doing his duty and reporting the
whistleblower letter to Congress, which is Trumps’ right but shouldn’t be
except for cause.

This is nothing but garden variety petty
vindictiveness on the part of Trump, so common that it barely warrants mention,
unless you care about proper functioning of a democratic government.

Worst State: I
was tempted to give the cup to Arizona this week, because our Governor, Doug
Ducey was very late to order the closure of non-essential businesses, and when
he did it was with moronic exceptions, such as beauty salons and nail parlors.
You can’t experience less social distancing than in one of those places,
except, well, perhaps massage parlors. (I wonder if they’re on the list of exceptions.)

But I can’t single out Ducey, because there are other
empty suit governors who have dithered and stalled also. Besides, Arizona is
late for almost everything, including being the last state to recognize Martin
Luther King Day.

As an aside: I often confuse Governor Doug Ducey with
that blithering idiot Steve Doocy on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” Though the
spellings are different, the names are pronounced the same and the individuals
have the same knuckle dragging I.Q.

I laughed out loud, literally, when I heard our
Secretary of State and Kansas favorite son Mike Pompeo accuse Russia, China and
Iran of spreading disinformation about Covid-19. Talk about the pot calling the
kettle a liar. So, Kansas gets the cup this week over Pompeo’s mendacity, not
stupidity.

Coming Attraction: As
this was going to post, The Sunday New York Times reported that after the
disclosure of Covid-19 in Wuhan, China, 430,000 people flew directly from China
to the U.S., including 40,000 since Trump said he banned their entry. This news
will require more study before comment.

In my latest blog, I mentioned some long-term neglects
that we are feeling the effects of acutely at this time. Here’s another one,
perhaps the most important one.

Our sickcare system sucks: Despite
all the happy talk from both political parties (Senator Sanders and a few
others excepted), we have a crappy healthcare system. It is the most
expensive in the world and it produces only average outcomes. And for all of
this, our system doesn’t even cover all our citizens.

And don’t even get me started on Medicare Part D – the prescription drug portion. The doughnut hole was supposed to shrink to zero in a few years; it hasn’t. And generic drugs, the ones supposed to keep costs down, keep getting more and more expensive. This is Dubba’s fault. He supported the idea of drug insurance, but he was too craven to ask people to pay for it with a tax increase, or to let Medicare, the world’s largest drug purchaser, to negotiate prices, which is insane.

I have Medicare and a supplement (why?), so things work
pretty well for me, though someone needs to explain to me why my supplemental
insurance, which covers 20% of my costs, is more expensive than my Medicare
premium that covers 80%. It’s a rhetorical question; I know the answer. It’s
one of the reasons our system is so expensive.

Still, I have problems. The paperwork is voluminous. I
get the occasional unexpected bill from some doctor who did something for me that
is not covered by the insurance. Usually, I don’t even recognize the doctor’s
name. I could be getting scammed for all I know.

We need a better, less expensive, more comprehensive
system producing better outcomes. And we could have one, if the insurance industry
didn’t have our legislators by the short and curlies. Let’s elect some braver
ones.

We need a War Production Board*: When
I was getting my MBA at Indiana University, I was fortunate that one of my
professors had been a member of the War Production Board during WWII.
Authorized by President Roosevelt, the WPB took control of much of our manufacturing
capability, goosed it up and focused it on producing war material. We turned
out astronomical numbers of planes, tanks, ships and much more over the course
of the war, and this was on a much smaller industrial base than we have today. They
got it done.

So, why are we struggling to produce ventilators,
masks, gowns, etc. by the millions now? Don’t answer; it’s a rhetorical question,
and we all know the answer.

*And another president. Or both.

Sudden thought: I sense my blogs are getting edgier
and angrier, but I seem to be getting less feedback.

Coulda, shoulda woulda: We are in one hell of a crisis right now, the kind that only a national response from the federal government can address. Sadly, this particular administration is egregiously unsuited to the task. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this administration couldn’t help an old lady across the street with a green light. Hell, they wouldn’t even want to.

However, intellectual honesty requires we acknowledge
that however incapable President Trump is, there are also other reasons we are
in such physical and financial peril today that go back further than Trump, things
we should have been addressing for years and chose not to do. These failures
are now biting us on the butt.

First, we have been shaving back the staffing and competence of our federal government for decades. Trump is not the first to do this, only the worst. As the country has grown our government has been shrinking inversely. One of our political parties wants it that way.

And, despite all the conservative happy talk, the
government has been growing and not in a good way. Layer upon layer of incompetence.
Look no further than the FDA, which should be front line with the best and is
not.

However, the prize goes to the Department of Homeland Security, an idea which only Dubbya could have been talked into, that added a spectacularly huge and bloated layer on our intelligence services without, I submit, much to show for it. We went for a show of quantity instead of quality.

Second, we have been pissing away money on scandalously wasteful priorities: Senseless wars, bloated military, giveaways to already rich plutocrats and debt service to pay for our irresponsible borrowing.

The Trump administration has been particularly egregious in
this regard. It borrowed more than a trillion dollars, probably closer to two,
and gave it to the richest of us. Now, we could really use that money
and it’s not there.

John Maynard Keynes said we should deficit spend in times of want and pay the deficit down in times of plenty. Politicians remember the first part but ignore the second part. Since World War II, the only president to follow both parts of the dictum was Bill Clinton, who was smart enough to use the windfall he enjoyed from the Dot.com bubble to balance the budget. Contrary to dire warnings, it helped the economy enormously.

The fact is, Americans want a whole lot of things but don’t
want to pay for them, and politicians don’t have the courage to tell us the
truth. It’s easier to borrow. We borrow about half of what we spend every year.
That’s a disastrous way to manage a budget.

Finally, the government squandered our trust in it. It’s worse than that really. I trace the steep loss of trust back to President Reagan, who told us we shouldn’t trust the government. Conservatives have been echoing that canard ever since and the trust has eroded commensurately.

Actually, I lay much of the blame for this on Nancy Reagan,
considering that the president wasn’t present during his second term, due to
Alzheimer’s and Nancy was in charge.

Let them get back to work: Channeling
Marie Antoinette, Trump and his economic and political advisors (where does he
find these crazies?), advocated – and have since walked back due to outrage,
not wisdom – sending people back to work on or about Easter Sunday, in effect
prioritizing the economy over human life. This thinking is not only twisted,
but misguided, because it wouldn’t resurrect the economy.

Most people, who tend to prefer life, wouldn’t go back
to work, and those who did would soon be sick and incapacitated. The economy
would collapse anyway and without an economy or federal support, many people
would become desperate and bad things would happen. They would certainly take
it out on Trump. Wait a minute! Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea after
all.

Cure v Problem? Discuss?: President
Trump says he does not want the cure for Covid-19 to be worse than the disease.
Well, Covid-19 sickens and kills people. What cure is worse than that? Personally, I would rather be alive and broke than
rich and dead.

Trump is obviously more concerned about the stock
market than American citizens. If my 401K is seriously depleted and Covid-19
and Trump are gone, I will consider it a successful political contribution and
live with it.

Trump’s guiding characteristics: We
all know that our president likes authoritarian leaders, and that, like Miniver
Cheevy about the Medici’s, he longs to be one. But at this moment in time, he
has authority to deal with Covid-19, but he is not using it aggressively or
wisely. So, in addition to his being a narcissist and a sociopath, he is also a
coward.

Sudden thought: Could we quarantine Trump and put New
York Governor Cuomo in charge for 14 days? We’d be in a lot better shape.

Worst state: Texas gets the cup this week, because Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick says at-risk senior citizens (of which I’m) should be willing to die if it will save the country. Note to Patrick: These are not mutually exclusive choices, or even legitimate choices at all. And by the way, Patrick, kiss my rosy red rectum, you disgusting pig part.

Patrick is what passes for a leader in Texas, which is
what is the matter with Texas.

Those of you old enough, do you remember when
President Reagan said, “In this present crisis,
government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem?” It
turns out Reagan was right. When you staff the government with thieving gypsies
and incompetents and people determined to tear the institutions of government
down, when a crisis comes along, Trump’s government does become the problem.
We’re seeing that right now.

States, municipalities, corporations, charities, medical
professionals and individuals are making Herculean efforts to address Covid-19.
The only ones failing miserably at their task is the Federal government.

Actually, the Feds’ performance is worse than failing;
it’s exacerbating the crisis. The White House is spewing out misinformation and
happy talk while the country is in deep viral doo doo. Like Hurricane Katrina
when George W. Bush was president, Covid-19 was always going to be bad, but the
president is making it worse. Many people are going to die needlessly due to
this pig part.

Pants wetter in chief: Almost
immediately after he was elected, President Trump’s detractors questioned his
ability to handle a true crisis situation, given his mental weakness, his
ignorance, his lack of curiosity, corrupt character, inability to tell the
truth and his narcissism.

It’s doubtful these pundits had Covid-19 in mind when
thinking about potential disasters Trump might face, but they were spot on in
their doubts Trump would handle any crisis competently, even those he created
himself. Now we know; he can’t. Leaders walk on water in a crisis. Trump is
passing water in this one.

Covid-19 is a perfect storm for Trump. It is dead
serious, global and unmoved by tweets. It is egalitarian – an equal opportunity
plague that can infect anyone easily and doesn’t check passports or recognize borders.
It lays Trump bare for everyone to see what a pathetic human, let alone a
leader, he truly is.

He knew it all the time:
Trump now says he knew early on that Covid-19 would cause a pandemic. Trump is
so stupid he doesn’t realize that if he knew a pandemic was coming while
telling the American people it is a hoax, that makes him more despicable than
he already is. What must it be like to be incapable of telling the truth and
unable to admit a single mistake?

Sickly Senate: Both
Romney and Paul have tested positive for Corvid-19 and are self-isolating. On
the last Senate vote on a relief package, the vote was 47-47 and the measure
failed. (If I were a Democratic Senator, I wouldn’t have voted for the bill
either. It resembled Trump’s tax cut, which gave all the benefits to rich
corporations and screwed everyone who works for a living.)

This means that only 94 senators voted at all.
Presumably, other senators are self-isolating than just Romney and Paul. This
raises some interesting possibilities.

Since Republicans, broadly, are taking fewer
precautions than Democrats, what if more Republican Senators get sick than
Democratic ones to the point Democrats have the majority. Would McConnell still
be the Senate Majority Leader? Would it matter? Senate Democrats may be able to
take over the senate and put an end to McConnell’s shenanigans.

More interesting still, what if so many senators get
sick that the senate can’t raise a quorum? How will the legislative branch function
then?

Worst State: The
cup this week goes to Texas, thanks to the dumbest sombitch in the House, Louis
Gohmert. Gohmert held up the House financial relief bill for a couple of days.
When I want to call someone stupid, I call them a Gohmert.

Primary motivation: Pundits are characterizing the Democratic primary, now down to Bernie v. Biden, as a contest between the progressive and establishment wings of the party. Based on the primary results, actual Democratic voters are not thinking that way at all. They are thinking practically and sequentially.

Consider what happens when a victim of a serious car
crash is brought into a hospital emergency room. What does the doctor do first?
He or she stabilizes the patient. Stops the bleeding. Applies oxygen. Restores
the vitals. Then the doctor can think about recovery, healing and
reconditioning.

This is what is going on in the minds of Democratic
voters, I think. It is certainly what is going on in mine. America has had a car
crash, which is Trump. We need to do first things first. Stop the bleeding. Get
Trump and all his corrupt and incompetent family, enablers and sycophants out
of the White House. Supply oxygen. Get the government up to full staff with
competent people. Restore the vitals. Reinstate traditional institutions and
norms. Then we can discuss where we go from here.

But first, get that pig part presidential prick gone.
Do it first, do it now. This is why voters are gravitating to Biden, who represents
the best candidate to accomplish the crucial first step. Then we can discuss
how far left we want to move, which I think is considerable.

By 2018, it was clear what a colossal mistake we had
made electing Trump. But he wasn’t on the ballot, so we began tossing out who
we could of his minions, often replacing them with considerably more liberal
candidates. This is what makes me think the country is ready to move further to
the left when government is restored.

In a recent Sunday New York Times, Frank Bruni
wrote the predictable piece near the end of every quadrennial primary season
that the loser was also a winner, because he or she had succeeded in shifting
the dialogue and narrative. This is banal, but it is also true, and it is also
a good thing.

Sudden thought: Millennials can no longer vote in
large enough numbers to get Bernie nominated, but they can vote in small enough
number in November to let Trump sneak in again, which would be a disaster.

POn this rare occasion, President Trump was right about something, but for absolutely the wrong reason, when he said “Paradise” shouldn’t have won the Best Picture Oscar. He said it because he’s a xenophobic bigot and he knew bashing foreigners would jack off his base. “Paradise” didn’t deserve the Best Picture Oscar because “Parasite” was a very good movie, just not the best. Among other things, it had two fatal cinematic flaws.P

The story is of one working class Asian family who by various means infiltrates members of its family into the household of another, very affluent one. Their plan succeeds by means sometimes clever, sometimes devious. Soon, they are the family’s housekeeper, chauffer, tutor of the daughter and so on. Though the plan was in some ways despicable, I saw nothing illegal about it.

But at this point of success in the plotters’ plan, a Deus
ex Machina event occurs when it turns out that the previous housekeepers’ sick
husband has been living in a hidden room in the basement of the home. The
plotters let the former housekeeper into the house to tend to her husband and
all Hell breaks loose. I can’t think of a more implausible plot line.

Near the end of the movie, totally inexplicable
violence occurs, as the head of the affluent family is murdered in broad
daylight by the head of the plotter’s family, and in the confusion, the head of
the plotters’ family ends up hiding from the police in the secret room that
formerly was occupied by the former housekeeper’s husband. The denouement,
though there is a little poetry in it, is so improbable that it undermines the
entire film.

If you haven’t already seen this movie, do so. It’s a
good movie but see the one below first.

The best movie of 2017 was “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” It has an interesting, more plausible plot, with much better actors. Francis McDormand is a national treasure and would have gotten my Best Actress Award, as she did for her starring role in “Fargo. Woody Harrelson is in it, and Sam Rockwell, and a good supporting cast.

This story is about a mother who is so despondent over
the rape and murder of her daughter and that no progress has been made on finding
the killer that she rents out three billboards that goad the sheriff into
trying harder. Pathos and redemption ensue.

Incompetence Redux: Having
put his incompetence on display Wednesday, President Trump tried to take a do
over on his Covid-19 policy Friday, declaring a national emergency and
outlining steps being taken, which Trump obviously didn’t develop and probably
doesn’t even understand. He was forced to this action to try to cover up the
depth of his disastrous performance two evenings before.

A reporter asked Trump whether he took any
responsibility for the problems addressing the virus, given that he dismantled
the agency and dismissed the experts therein who would otherwise have been
there when needed. Trump said he took “no responsibility at all.”

Trump seems to have forgotten he is the president, or
he has no understanding of what his job description is. The former is
surprising since he talks about being president incessantly. Hell, he’s still
talking about his electoral college count and the crowd size at his inauguration
more than three years ago.

Regarding the latter, it’s obvious he doesn’t know or care
much about his job description, or anything else for that matter, except
himself.

But bottom line, Trump doesn’t get to decide whether
he takes responsibility or not. Voters do, and they tend to think presidents have
responsibility for their administrations.

Trump has been exposed and he has been kicked aside. Others
have taken over while Trump sucks his thumb. Governors and municipal
authorities are taking their own emergency measures. Business owners are sending
employees home temporarily. Any event involving large crowds, including major
sporting events, is being reviewed or is already cancelled. Schools, notorious
petrie dishes of germs, are beginning to close. Congress put together
bipartisan legislation to allocate and distribute emergency funds, which Trump
will have to sign, or they will make him eat spinach.

The markets were so relieved they actually went up. (Trump
may be happy about this, but the crash left an ugly mark that I think won’t be
forgotten in November.)

We may get out of this thing alive yet, but obviously
no thanks to our cock-up in chief.

Oil: The price of gasoline at the pump is about to
drop significantly; it is, in fact, already doing so. This is the perfect time to raise the
gasoline tax.

First, gas taxes help reduce gasoline
consumption. When the retail price of
gas drops. it encourages Americans to buy more gas guzzling cars. One in every
nine barrels of oil produced each day goes into American gas tanks already. This
is a bad thing for the globe. Keeping the price up with higher taxes will
discourage this.

Second, it will generate revenue for things we need to
be doing without additional cost to a tax averse public with zero (or less than
zero if they listen to Fox News) understanding of economics, including even
things as basic as supply and demand.

It is the intelligent thing to do, which is its
weakness.

Full disclosure: I heard experts, real experts,
propose increasing the gas tax on NPR. But I had this idea one-and-one-half
hours before the broadcast, so I am not mimicking it, and am taking credit for
having thought of it, originally.

Ben Carson:
This name I had not heard nor thought of in a long time. Carson is an enigma, a
brilliant neurosurgeon, apparently, who is in every other way incompetent and
even loopy. I assumed the Trump administration had locked him away like Beth
Mason, the violently insane wife of Edward Rochester in Bronte’s Jane Eyre.)

Anyway, he came back into the news this week in
connection with the administration’s Covid-19 virus response, which did nothing
to increase my confidence in how it is being handled.

Caron’s department (I can’t even remember which one it
is) was charged with finding space for the American patients and potentially
infected passengers from the cruise ship that has been circling around San
Francisco with them. I’m surprised Carson could find San Francisco, let alone
bed space, even though the former is probably in view through the port holes of
the ship.

Football: Having
been blessed with great quarterback play, Oklahoma has also attracted good
receivers as well. If I were the Dallas Cowboys, and I knew for sure that I
could get CeeDee Lamb at #17 in the NFL draft (which I am pretty sure will be
held without an audience), I would take Lamb, let Amari Cooper go and use the
money saved to pay Dak Prescott and Byron Jones, tagging Jones if necessary.

I have been watching Lamb for years, and he is the
goods. I am not exaggerating when I say that his quarterback could take the
ball, turn his back on the defense, throw the ball in that direction toward his
own goal line, and Lamb would run back there and catch it and go score a
touchdown with it. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but he is a fabulous player with
perhaps the best pair of hands I have seen, and Dallas is in a tight spot with
salary cap money.

Worst State: Nothing,
and I mean absolutely nothing that the worst states could do would trump the federal
government’s misfeasance (read screwup) of the Covid-19 mess. Said someone else
about something else, “It’s worse than a crime, it’s a blunder,” and one that is
destined to become very costly.

Tom Frieden, former CDC director about controlling
contagious diseases that the Bush administration initiated measures to prepare
for a possible pandemic and the Obama administration strengthened them. The
Trump administration tore them all down.

Frieden said in a worst-case scenario, a million
Americans will die of his disease, perhaps even more. Best case? Well, we’ve
already surpassed that.

This being the case, I am now jumping Trump over
Dubbya as the worst president in modern times, by which I mean post-Civil War.

Incompetence vividly on display: President Trump gave a speech last night to lay
out his administration’s plans to address Covid-19. It was a somber speech read
from the teleprompter, and Trump stuck to the script.

Here’s the thing. It was filled with stupid, useless ideas.
For instance, Trump announced that he is banning entry to all citizens of
Europe, except from the UK and Ireland.

(Apparently, Trump doesn’t know that the countries exempted
from this ban are not actually European. Britain is not part of Europe and has
been trying to get out of the EU – not the same thing as Europe the continent) for
years, which it finally succeeded in doing, recently. It’s surprising Trump –
or any of his minions – didn’t know these things. Brexit was in all the papers.
(Wait, maybe it is not so surprising.)

For this idea to be useful would require that Covid-19
checks the passports of everyone coming from Europe to the U.S. and avoids affecting
U.S. citizens, only Europeans. Unlikely.

Worse, the speech was riddled with inaccuracies about
Trumps own plan, which the administration had to correct within minutes of the
ending of the speech. Jesus Christ, this administration is so incompetent that
no one thought to fact check the speech against the plan. Obviously, Trump had
little knowledge of or interest in the speech. He probably stopped paying
attention to its development when he got to the word “ban,” thinking his base
would reflexively approve.

This debacle, involving the most serious crisis since
2008, illuminates with the brightness of the Sun how stupid and clueless is our
president, and the quality of staff around which he has surrounded himself. I
wouldn’t trust these guys with my burnt match sticks, let alone a serious
problem.

The results of this debacle of a speech is that the meltdown
of the stock market accelerated, and businesses and individuals kicked Trump to
the curb mentally and started taking things into their own hands. Governors are
stepping in, the NBA put its season on hold, the NCAA canceled the basketball
championship tournament (I’m truly sorry about this one), and individuals
started taking their personal responses more seriously.

Churchill said nothing focuses the mind like being
shot at without result. Well, this virus is something like that. Plus, coming
in a close second in attention getting may be realizing that your leader is a
moron and not a high functioning one at that.

In the interest of helping out, here is a modest
suggestion: In a well-intended use of technology, many buildings (Margaret, buildings
in this case is a Synecdoche, a
literary device which uses the container for the thing contained, in this case
businesses, or vice versa) installed automatically controlled water
spigots to conserve water, and it works, though it’s inconvenient to have to turn
the water back on frequently to wash ones hands.

But now, this idea is working against us in containing
the virus. I suggest adjusting the spigots to run for exactly 20 seconds, which
I think will improve compliance with the 20- second hand washing advice of
medical experts to help control Covid-19.

Caught up in the euphoria of Super Tuesday, I am
making the leap to contemplate a Democratic government, after the 2020 election.
Call it premature enthusiasm ejaculation.

My ruminations begin with the opinion that every one
of the Democratic candidates is competent and has a future in the party at some
point. However, if I were going to select candidates from among the Senators
among that lot, they would have to be from states where they would surely be
replaced by another Democrat, such as…

Secretary of Treasury: Elizabeth Warren. I would love to see her in
this post. The day she is appointed all major bank presidents would move to
countries that don’t have extradition treaties with the United States. Talk
about self-deportation.

Attorney General: Kamala
Harris. She was a tough, successful prosecutor and she hates all the same
people I hate. She would be Eric Holder with even bigger cajones. It cannot be
anyone from the DOJ’s Southern District of New York. They will be too busy prosecuting
Trump family members.

Health and Human Services: Bernie
Sanders. Put this guy in a position to act on his ideas instead of standing out
in the cold alone.

Amy Klobuchar: I
love her, but she must remain in the Senate, because there is no iron clad
guarantee that she would be replaced by a Democrat. Another term in the Senate
for her in Minnesota. She might then be our next presidential candidate.

Secretary of Defense: Paul Krugman. I don’t
know when or why the name of this department changed from War to Defense, but
it doesn’t matter. All Defense Secretaries think positively instead of
cautiously about going to war. Think Robert McNamara, Donald Rumsfeld, et. al. As
a Nobel Laureate, Krugman would cut the defense budget in half and start
trimming from there.

If we must have a military man, a close friend of mine
is high on Retired Admiral William McRaven. He has the right stuff. He was a
superb military officer and he was Chancellor of the University of Texas System.
Hey, maybe McRaven would make a good…

Secretary of Education: You
could replace Betsy DeVos with any number of education experts (or a dime store
mannequin for that matter) and have an upgrade. Bernie Sanders would also be a
possibility in this post. He has one important credential I like: he is a
mortal enemy of charter schools and vouchers, both of which are tools of racial
discrimination.

Housing and Urban Development: Beto
O’Rourke. Hispanic Texans are made for this job. He can get more experience and
increase his popularity with Hispanic voters for a future run higher up the
ladder.

Secretary of Commerce: Pete
Buttigieg. Pete lacks experience in many areas, but local business is not one
of them, and he is an elegant speaker, which is helpful when promoting our
economy and businesses around the world. Another place to get experience in
preparation for bigger things.:

Ambassadors to countries in Central or
South America: The Cisneros twins.

Mike Bloomberg: It’s
said that with any fortune, there is a crime, and this may be true, but I am a
fan of Bloomberg, if not of all his positions. First, he seems to have made his
vast fortune the right way, by having a great idea and executing it with brilliance
and passion. Second, he gets things done effectively as do few others. Finally,
he keeps his eye on the ball, as evidenced by his getting in and out of the
presidential primary race by focusing on beating Donald Trump. I would sit down
with him and ask him what he would like to do for his country now, except…

Vice President: I
don’t know who I am ready to pick yet, but it must be a female, and younger. A
woman of color would be preferred but not existential. (Kamala Harris might be
such a candidate. Susan Rice?)

She must be a good one, not a Danielle Quayle or
Michelle Pence. Based on political history and life expectancy probabilities,
it’s almost certain that the next VP will be the next president someday.

I just don’t know yet, but I do know who I wouldn’t be
interested in today: Stacey Abrams, the black Senatorial candidate who narrowly
lost her race in Georgia in 2016. She is talented and articulate, but I am suspicious
of her. Democrats have a chance to pick up at least one Senatorial seat in
Georgia, maybe even two, and Abrams would be an obvious, ideal candidate, but
she passed on the calling.

Emerson wrote, “So nigh is grandeur to our dust, so
near is God to man, when duty whispers low, “Thou must,” the youth replies, “I
can.” He did not write, “the youth replies, No, I’ll pass on it.” Abrams is
going to have to show me a whole lot more before I will trust her again.

Sudden thought: Is it possible Abrams held out
thinking she might be the VP candidate? If so, that would be impressive long-term
strategic thinking.

Stock tip: Apropos
of nothing political, I recommend buying stock in any company that makes hand
lotions. We are all going to have chapped hands from alcohol-loaded hand
sanitizers when the Covid-19 event, whatever it turns out ultimately to be, is
finished.